Somewhere in a meeting room in EA, a place where heartbeats have been replaced with the papery flap of money being riffled, a meeting took place.

“February 12th?”
“Dear God, no. That’s the day the creator of Peanuts died!”
“Okay, how about the 13th, then?”
“Excuse me, but did you really just suggest we launch the demo on first day of the The Festival of Parentalia? There’ll be outrage! I won’t sit here and allow you to disgrace EA by -”
“Alright! Enough! February 14th? Does anything significant happen on that day? Anything at all?”
“Well, it’s the anniversary of Australian currency being decimalised, but other than that…”
“Fine. Right. Gentlemen: from this day forth, February the 14th shall forever be known as ‘The Day EA released the Mass Effect 3 demo’. Call Clintons: I have an idea for a commemorative card”
It’s a Valentine’s Day Mass(Effect)acre. The final episode in Bioware’s trilogical tale of Commander Shepard‘s has a demo looming over the most romantic day of the year. If you care about such notions, you’ll have to decide between a romantic dinner, or fighting off a Reaper attack on Earth. Multiplayer access to the two co-op maps will go live on the 17th, although you can get in on the 14th if you own Battlefield 3 and you’ve unlocked that game’s online pass. Because that’s a thing you have to do now.

You’ll need Origin to download it, and space for 15GB of story-based RPG action. Bioware’s announcement also tells us the demo’s specs, which we presume will match the full game’s.
Are you ready with your screwdriver?

Yep, god damn it EA. Give me a choice between digital distributors and I’ll choose Origin if it gives me a better service.

Completely ignoring quality of service and just blockading your competitors is such a infuriating thing to do. It’s like admitting you can’t compete but customer experience be damned, EA want all your money.

When Half-Life or Portal appear on any download service other than Steam, THEN you can talk about Origin being unfair. They’re simply doing precisely what Valve did to us over Half-Life 2. I’m not thrilled about Yet Another Client – and I’m still not happy about using Steam at all – but I’ll probably buy Mass Effect 3 because it will drive me berserk not having an end to the story that I’ve become invested in.

And to forestall the inevitable diatribe from those with less willpower… no I’m not going to “just do it anyway, admit it”. Just like I don’t play games with Ubisoft-DRM.

And for those banging the anti-steam drum, I’d ask you.. “has steam ever disabled an account for something you posted on a forum?”

Actually, does anyone know under what circumstances Steam *does* disable accounts? Would be quite interesting. I’ve heard it can happen if you use a proxy to circumvent their geoip/rights restrictions, or if you use or are gifted a game that was bought with a stolen credit card. A quick google finds link to consumerist.com, which suggests someone fell foul of something else (in game behavior?) but without details.

Well I for one, am going to buck the trend and say I’m avoiding ME3 not because of Origin, but because I am very wary of Bioware’s dlc policies. Until I know I can get the complete game for something close to retail price and my dlc purchases won’t be unauthorized by a shoddy update or poor connection, I’m playing it safe.

If this means Shepard won’t be able to dress up as a space knight or recolor his guns, SO BE IT.

Steam and Origin are only comparable on the surface. Yes, they are both digital distro outlets. But while Steam has proven its worth over time and against prevailing opinion (I hated it when HL2 came out, now I rarely consider anything else as a source for games), Origin has no such distinction.

EA have been messing around with online distro for years, rather badly. They keep changing the name and function of their services, and they have zero consistency. Look at the ‘veteran’ unlocks for BFBC2: you got a special rifle if you owned any other Battlefield games, but every single one had a different kind of code or password that you had to enter. I have no confidence in the longevity of Origin based on EA’s atrocious track record. Then there’s the whole thing about data sharing (which Valve don’t do), and the thing about forum bans that carry over to all your games (which Valve also don’t do). Plus, on a personal level, I have far more hesitation giving my money to EA than I do Valve, since Valve evidently prioritise customer service and EA evidently prioritise shareholder service. And I’ve yet to find out if I can redownload without restriction from Origin, which is another dealbreaker for me.

So no, sad though I am on some level, I’ll not be playing ME3. If Origin had never existed, I’d only have bought it when it became cheap anyway, thanks to Bioware mutating it into a quite different game to the one I started playing. I hope it’s good, of course, but I fear it’ll be far from that.

EA have a long long way to go before they can acquire the kind of trust i have in steam, call me naive but i feel valve have went quite far to build that relationship and perception that once bought you will always be able to play it – EA still delete your ownership after 2 years with digital products, not to mention anyone who uses install limits warrants mistrust imo and finally i consider forcing bundling an uncompetitive product with a competitive product to offset each other as uncompetitive, anti capitalist and socially immoral, be it mobile phone contracts, games consoles or this (to suggest you avoid this affect by playing it on the consoles is idiotic ofc.).

The difference between Steam and Origin is that Valve are a rather non-prolific developer and EA are a megalithic publisher. When a publisher directly sells its wares as well as wholesaling them to select other distributors, conflicts of interest abound.

@andytt66, normally the only thing that actually gets you locked out of an account is if you are in fact hacking the system or it’s users to steal games/accounts/whatever. That post you found was weird, but I’ll admit that’s the first time I’ve heard of something like that happening.

Certainly not through major media sites like EA’s been garnering. If you go into the Consumerist’s own comment thread there are people there doubting the poster’s veracity.

Will ME 3 PC have any DX10-11 features whatsoever? Those specs imply the entire game will be in DX9.

Forgive me, as I haven’t read every ME3 article posted here. I ask especially since I can see them limiting the demo to DX9 for cost and pre-order cannibalization avoidance and using DX10+ as a marketing incentive…

Ha! I do so love being non-stereotypical! Not only do I have a girlfriend that lets me have real, genuine sex with her but I’ll probably end up buying her a copy of the game too so I won’t find her hogging mine every hour she gets.

I talked to a girl once. In fact, I chose my words so carefully and spoke so eloquently that she allowed me to sex her right in the vagina. She wanted me to sex her some more the next day and the day after that, but I said no. I just can’t be tied down like that.

Reading elsewhere, it was noticed that the CPU requirements are slightly down and the GPU slightly up from ME2, but it seems to be like this will be more of a direct port with little to boost the visual quality, which is a shame. Not that 2 looked bad by any stretch of the imagination, but a wasted opportunity.

Anyhow, bare in mind that if you pre-ordered BF3 you get an early…thing, for ME3. Regardless, I shall be downloading this.

Valve, via Steam, is under legal obligation to the clients who have paid them to provide DRM services to their games that Steam hosts for them. That service entails only allowing the launch of authenticated content to legitimate owners.

EA, via Origin, does the same but isn’t paid by anyone to be legally obligated to anything. They just provide a DRM platform for their own game catalog and nothing else.

Enter the “Pause Update, Play Now” feature. EA can independently conclude that whoever authenticated for v1.0, can play it at 1.0 for now before going to 1.1 if they wish. Valve cannot because even if they thought such a feature was reasonable, they could only apply it to their Valve games, which triggers a snowball-down-the-hill reaction of whining from their client base about why it can’t be applied to all games, which then costs resources to explain it to the children and spray enough PR retardant to quell the flames.

But lets pretend the feature did exist on Steam for all the games, what now? Does the feature work only once? Last a limited time before mandatory updating? If it lasts forever, how does Steam manage and authenticate multiple copies of multiple games? If a patch fixes a security breach, like closing a loophole that allowed piracy and thus the failure of the DRM, does Valve become an unwitting party to damages against their clients?

I think I’ve decided that Origin won’t stop me getting ME3. I’ve invested a lot of time in the series, and if the game is good I’ll be finishing the fight (wait…).

But after that, I’ll be giving it (and thus, apparently all EA games) a wide berth until a) there is more clarity over what data it sends to EA about my machine AND I have some reasonable control over it, b) they stop banning people from playing games arbitrarily and clarify their policies regarding withdrawal of their service from paying customers, and c) they give me a very good reason not to use the services I already know and trust.

I’ve invested quite a lot into the first two Mass Effects over the last year, and since I already had to install Origin to download the first two games anyway, it’s really not too much of a stretch to use it for the third.

@ the Aplogist Hold up, ME 3 is being sold on many more sites than Origin AND it is still being sold at retail. You need origin as a one time activator. So no problems there. Also, in regards to data, Origin looks in your Program files to find the old EA games folders and seen anonymous system hardware specs back to EA. That is all.

@Commisar – sorry, you’re right – I should have been clearer. I meant ‘ME3 requiring Origin to play won’t stop me buying it’. I’ll just purchase it from wherever is cheapest, which on past form might well end up being an online retail copy. My concerns are with being required to have Origin to play. I’m still going to get it because I am invested heavily in that series, but it’s the only EA game that carries that weight with me.

It’s interesting what you say about the specific stats it collects and sends. I guess they are relatively benign at the moment, but as I understand it, I have some control over this process in Steam but none in Origin, and the EULA leaves it open to EA to have Origin collect more information than that if they chose in future. Is that right?

When it comes down to it, I guess I basically don’t trust EA based on their behaviour towards customers in the past.

Buy it or don’t play it. If you don’t play it, send them an email to tell them why. They probably won’t read it, but it’s about the best you can do. You can also try to persuade all your friends not to buy it too.

I appreciate that if your using a lap-top they may well matter but im beginning to feel like specs mean more along the lines of “if it’ll play on an xbox360, your average PC will handle it easy”. Im probably wrong about this, but surely multi-platform games can’t be truely taxing for a mordernish PC, just look at Crysis 2?

EA is part of an organisation that is supporting SOPA. They pay money to lobby for it. You should boycott them permenantly for trying to remove your internet server let alone the other attacks on your freedoms (Origin).

If you can work out how to control your urges to buy games that are encumbered then maybe we could finally get this problem fixed by making games flops because of the DRM. As it is every year for the last 10 has been a loss of freedoms progressively, Orwell would not be proud.

Hmm. I don’t think ‘reporting on’ is the same as ‘promoting’. And since the anti-SOPA position is all about protesting the threat to the freedom of information on the internet, refusing to publish info on EA games would seem a bit backwards to me.

I agree with you that they should still freely report on games. However, isn’t it odd to shut down the site in protest of SOPA only to write a story the next day that does ‘promote’ and yes this article does help promote ME3 made by EA/Bioware that will use it’s leverage to turn around and lobby for SOPA.

Come on I don’t think I’m the only one who finds this strange. Either you’re against SOPA or you’re not. If you’re against SOPA then you are against companies that support it. (can you financially support a company that wants to take away internet freedom?)

It really comes down to “we just want to play the shiny game” doesn’t it?

Your mistake, Frek, is to assume EA is one big monolithic block of intellectual solidarity and every component of the vast organisation thinks alike. Do the developers of Mass Effect 3 themselves support SOPA? If so, then I’d consider boycotting it. They may support greater protection of content, which most content creators do, but are they happy with how SOPA is worded/structured?

But if it’s just EA’s legal teams and upper management speaking up in support of it then that’s different. In every business you’ll get competing opinions within the same teams, never mind departments. Try not to be so black and white in your approach to life. I see no discord between opposing SOPA and purchasing an EA title.

according to the official thread on the subject, there are other Digital Services offering ME3 other then Origin, its just steam isn’t one of them.
Plus the working on the post indicates you just need Origin for the initial download and authorization, and that you can close origin and just run the EXE directly.

Nice of Bioware to have kept the system requirements for their games pretty tame over the years. I may have an AMD Phenom II X6 with a Radeon HD 6670 now, but I can feel for those who don’t quite have that much horsepower under the hood.

Origin isn’t a one time activator – it’s needed to both activate the game and MUST be installed (and running? I can’t get any confirmation on that) in order to play the game (single or multiplayer). EA also haven’t confirmed if patches and DLCs will be available outside Origin, and to top it off there’s no option to opt out of data collection in Origin.

Being effectively blackmailed into bloatware like Origin if I want to play a game is bad enough, the data collection thing is just icing on the particularly brown & smelly cake.

On a semi-related side note: Did EA ever come back about the forum ban = game ban issue?